Animagus Minus Magic
by Flitty
Summary: At the end of his third year, Harry begins learning to become an Animagus. This throws a wrench in more than a few plans, for better or for worse.
1. Take Two

**I dob't own Harry Potter or his Animagus form, but I did hab da idea to put dem together. (This is a clue as to Harry's form)**

* * *

Harry scratched his head, staring blankly at the parchment in front of him. As it turned out, Animagus training was _hard._ He'd had to study the night sky for various patterns, link the correct constellation to his date of birth, and since he didn't know the time he was born down to the minute, he now had to do several calculations in base 12, begin brewing a potion on the correct night and add the basilisk skin and wolfsbane at the exact right times, then keep up a steady rhythm of stirs and add a drop of his own blood every seventh stir.

And that was _before_ sieving through his mind for any non-human emotion, identifiable only by that particular potion, and confining them into a separate portion of his mind with advanced occlumency, and then using those emotions to isolate the specific formation of magic that would allow him to transform. Then he'd have to feed the formation more magic over a couple of months until it stabilized and he could transform at will.

It was amazing that the Marauders had managed it, especially since basilisk skin wasn't sold at the apothecary, and went for high prices on the market thanks to the dangers of harvesting it.

Thankfully, he'd actually had the presence of mind to slip down to the Chamber of Secrets and cut himself a load of skin from the basilisk he'd killed. After a few interrogations disguised as absent curiosity, Hermione had confirm that the body was his by right of conquest, so his plan didn't go up in smoke.

All the other ingredients were part of his third year requirements, and he'd somehow had masses to spare despite all his goof-ups in Potions. He privately suspected Dobby of restocking his supplies.

The scribbling of a quill marked Harry's completion of the mathematics, and he snapped shut the convenient guide to number systems he'd found in the local muggle library. The day today was the first of July, which meant he'd need to begin brewing at exactly midnight. He'd rather have had a little more time to set up, considering that it was already nine in the evening, but the potion only needed minimal setup on the first night, and didn't need to be watched for a day after the first half hour, so it wasn't too detrimental to his sleep cycle.

* * *

Harry came to a startling realization on the second of July: without Snape or the dungeon atmosphere bringing his mood down, Potions was actually a nice subject to study. The bubbling of the cauldron over a conjured fire was a nice change of pace from the frantic wand-waving of Charms and Transfiguration. History probably would have managed the same feat, but Professor Binns' monotonous retelling of various goblin rebellions made it difficult to imagine.

Harry had actually taken to roasting marshmallows above the currently hot pink liquid, of course discarding the ones that got in the way of popping bubbles. It was a fun way to waste away the time, and Harry guessed that he would spend days like this with Ron and Hermione in the future, especially if they wanted to become Animagi themselves - the potion used the blood of the drinker to form a connection to their mind, so he'd need completely new batches for his friends.

An alarm went off and Harry jolted in surprise, almost dropping the molten mallow into the potion and spoiling them both. The half hour was up, so he quickly threw the basilisk skin into the cauldron, settling the bubbles that had been threatening to spill over the edge. After checking that the potion went the bright blue it was supposed to, he slipped into his old bed and was out like a light.

* * *

Harry groaned as he set up his mediocre occlumency shields just in time to fully awaken. He'd been practicing occlumency for a week or two at Hogwarts, but he still hadn't quite gotten to the proper level. Thankfully the potion didn't lose effectiveness over time, so he could easily bottle it up and leave it in his school trunk until he mastered the art.

His thoughts were rudely interrupted by heavy stomping, and he grinned to himself. It was strange that Vernon thought he could catch Harry in the act when his footsteps woke the neighbors. Vernon burst in, surveyed the room for a few seconds and made a gruff noise of disappointment before leaving the room, all without acknowledging the occupant. The room-shaking thuds slowly faded away, and Harry whipped the invisibility cloak off his concoction, glad that he'd gotten a better cauldron stand than the average.

The potion resembled lava, complete with a thick skin of what seemed to be rock, so Harry dropped in a few purple petals and pushed the skin to the bottom of the liquid, where it dissolved back into the mix. He sighed as a haze of smoke began spilling from the cauldron, signalling that he had timed it correctly. In just another day, the potion would be complete.

Covering the potion with the cloak again, the budding Animagus settled on his bed and dove back into his mind.

* * *

Amazingly, Harry managed a rudimentary form of the advanced occlumency he needed by the time that the potion was finished. Said potion had turned out perfectly without the usual stress of a Potions class, and he resolved to learn more of the theory so he could actually do a decent job in the dungeons. He pulled a few round-bottom flasks from his trunk and ladled as much of the potion into them as was physically possible; he'd most likely need more than just one to identify the different emotions and memories.

Downing a mouthful of the stuff, Harry briefly raised an eyebrow at the surprisingly pleasant fruity taste of the drink, before placing the flask back on the floor, covering the entire array of equipment with the cloak and diving into his mind to make a proper attempt to sort his memories.

The first time he'd managed to see his mindscape, Harry had been amused to note that his memories were strewn about the 'floor' like an untidy man's dirty washing. At first, he hadn't been able to interact properly with the thoughts, but he eventually managed to sort them into various piles based on which year he'd gotten them.

It had been rather worrying when he'd ended up with few memories before his eleventh birthday, but the book he was working from said that memory annihilation was common among abused children. While Harry wouldn't classify himself as abused or a child, he had to admit that his life hadn't been the image of happiness it probably should have been.

After he'd sorted everything into neat little piles, Harry had been left with a gigantic space for his current emotions to run amock inside, greatly increasing his capacity for said emotions. His previous nightmares had been contained since he'd sandwiched the bad memories between so many better ones, and he found himself thinking more clearly than ever.

The hardest part of the training had been the barriers. He needed to fence off his animalistic emotions and memories from the more human ones, and to do that he needed barriers. He'd started simply enough, surrounding his mind with a couple of thick stone walls like the ones comprising Hogwarts. After that, he'd added windows and doors so he could easily see and interact with the world from inside his defences. He'd added a roof just in case aerial mental assault was possible, then immediately recognized his mistake when the inside went pitch black. It had taken the past few days to set up torches and a pen for the animalistic thoughts, but he was ready.

This time, everything was different. The memories, rather than the normal colours that they usually were, had been tinted to reflect the type of memory. According to the book, there were three kinds of memory: Human, the memories of rational thought; Sensory, the memories of sights, sounds, smells and so on; and of course Animalistic memories, those of instincts and reflex. The colours were different between people, so the only way to figure out which was which was through process of elimination.

The red-tinted memories were Sensory for Harry. He'd noticed a couple of different tastes in the first year pile, so those had been fairly easy to figure out. All the red memories were taken out of their piles and placed right next to the year they came from. The blue ones were Human. Just like the Sensory memories, these ones came out of the piles and into their own. Of course, that left the green memories. Now that Harry could identify them however, they'd gotten good at fighting back. He could barely move them to the pen in the corner, and once he'd finally shoved his way to victory, the piles came apart and Harry was reminded of how his mind had looked at first.

That done, the almost-official Animagus looked through the nearest window to enter the real world once more. He grasped where he knew the invisibility cloak to be and lifted it off the Potions things.

He was met by five vials of unused, unuseable Animagus potion. He immediately groaned as he realized that he'd have to somehow get rid of them without magic. One glance at the book, however, convinced him to just hold onto them.

* * *

It was the next day and Harry was rested up after the event of the previous day had left him exhausted. Vernon had once again barged in and stormed off sulkily, so Harry was ready to try an actual transformation. The book stated that he would only be able to hold his Animagus form for seconds at a time at first, but over time it would become easier to make the connection until he could hold it even in his sleep.

All things considered, the training hadn't been too extremely advanced thus far. Harry briefly wondered if people just assumed it was hard because they couldn't be bothered to go through all the different steps, and he honestly couldn't blame them. To him though, the result would be well worth the effort, even if he turned out to be an animal that he didn't particularly like. God forbid he was a rat though. If that happened, he'd keep the secret to his grave and never use the form, no matter how useful it would be in a scrap.

The Animagus book offered a surprising nugget of insight among the already helpful instructions: transforming didn't trip the unaderage magic wards, just as Metamorphmagus and Werewolf transformations didn't, because they were all a part of a group of internalized transfiguration. For a similar reason, Animagi and Metamorphmagi couldn't become Werewolves, and neither Metamorphmagi nor Werewolves could become Animagi.

That final observation seemed somehow important so Harry stored it in his mind for later and settled down, preparing his first attempt at Animagus transformation.

* * *

 **Yes, I'm doing another Animagus fic. The last one was my most long-running series so far, just because it basically gave me a skeleton key, except for plots, so I never really got bored... until I did.**

 **Now I feel like doing more Animagus stuff, but it's been so long since I updated Scared? that it doesn't really feel right to update it now. Maybe sometime in the future though.**

 **You might figure out Harry's Animagus form next chapter, but I seriously doubt anyone reading this has watched the Youtube series the creature is from. It's hands down my favourite ever series, so I'll be posting the link once I give a passable description of the form.**

 **PS: What do I do if a series I'm writing for doesn't have its own category?**


	2. Breaking Boredom

Harry was frustrated. He might have unlocked the Animagus tranformation, but he could still barely get it to work. The book had said that he'd need some kind of surprising event so he could observe how his animal part reacted, but he was stuck inside a single room, bored out of his wits.

A few things _had_ happened, but he was so used to strange occurences that neither the human nor animal sides of him had reacted with any more than a sluggish sigh. Firstly, he'd done a little more rooting around in his mind, with the potion to help him find anything he'd missed. It hadn't taken long before he'd been introduced to a sort of pitch black fog, which constantly darted around and attempted to break through a few walls. They held strong though, and it wasn't long before the darkness was trapped inside a locked chest, rattling inside it like a boggart.

Other than that, it had been a very boring holiday so far. A few letters had convinced both the Weasleys and Hermione that Harry needed extra sustenance, and the boy soon found himself almost literally waist-deep in cakes and all sorts of other sweets. From Hermione he'd received several eggs, bread, butter and promises for more. He'd started sneaking down at night to cook himself a couple of eggs, however he felt like having them at the time, then eating them as quickly as possible, washing the pan and sneaking back upstairs to have a dessert that Hermione would murder him for if she ever found out.

After that, he'd set up his cauldron and brew the lower-level potions, writing down the colours and effects of each stage and trying to figure out which ingredient did what, because none of the textbooks set by Snape had actually done that for whatever reason. It honestly felt more like a game than anything else. A game with no way to know if you've won, but a game nonetheless.

The biggest reason for Harry's frustration was lack of sleep. He had no clue when the Weasleys would pick him up, only that it would be during the day on the 21st of August. Because of his nightly activities, he now _slept_ through the day, so he felt he could be forgiven for being a little annoyed. The envelope covered in stamps did help to alleviate his mood however, and by the time a gigantic bang sounded from the fireplace, he'd gotten over his need for sleep and felt he could soldier on through the rest of the day.

Vernon might not forgive his outburst though. Not because he'd punched someone across the room, or set the dinner on fire. It was because he'd _hissed._ Not parseltongue either, although he had been able to understand it so maybe he'd just temporarily gained an accent for a magical language spoken by sentient reptilian worms. It made as much sense as the rest of his life.

Harry was brought out of his musings as the fireplace let out another boom, dislodging some dust on the mantlepiece. He could vaguely hear a few voices that he remembered from the previous summer, as well as one that he'd known for a lot longer.

"-be Harry can hear us, Dad - ow - not in the ribs George!"

"Fred."

"Doubt it."

Harry sighed loudly as Vernon paled rapidly and followed Dudley out of the room. Apparently the parseltongue had been enough abnormality for one day.

"Mr Weasley, is that you?" Harry called, and without waiting for an answer, "The fireplace's boarded up, hang on, I'll vanish-"

"No, you'd get in trouble," Mr Weasley interrupted firmly, "and I'm not the best at vanishing charms... Stand back, I'll have to blast it!"

Harry groaned, good mood ebbing away a little. He knew the living room would be fixed with a simple repairing charm, but he doubted the same could be said of the Dursleys' minds. At least Petunia was the only one in the room; the two males hadn't come back to defend their household, and they probably wouldn't step foot in the living room any time soon.

Diving behind the convenient sofa, Harry clapped his hands over his ears at the ensuing noise as several splinters of wood, varying in size from bone-breaking to bone-crushing, flew overhead and impacted against the wall. After a few seconds of silence, he finally peered over the peppered couch at the bundle of robes that was the Weasleys. Fred and George extracted themselves from the mess and waved at him in unison, and he found himself waving back with a dumb grin slapped onto his face.

"Terribly sorry for the mess," a sheepish Mr Weasley addressed Petunia, who had retreated to the doorway just in time to avoid the barrage, and was currently swaying on her feet, shock written across her face. "I suppose I shouldn't have cast it through the floo. Did a good job but it was a little on the overpowered side." When he failed to get a response, the poor man's grin wavered slightly.

Ron broke the awkward silence, giving Petunia a dirty look as he remembered the bars on Harry's window. "Alright mate? Done your homework so Hermione won't pester you?"

Harry nodded with a chuckle. "I did it in the first week because I was so bored. Then I ended up making a couple of potions..." He trailed off uncertainly as Ron gave a look of betrayed disgust.

His worry was abated when Ron clapped him on the back. "We'll get you back to your old self in no time, so don't worry. It must've been traumatic here, for you to have turned so easily to the greasy side."

An older boy who Harry remembered as Percy scowled. "It looks like _some_ people still need to learn to respect their elders," he sniffed importantly.

Fred and George winced. "And imagine mum's-"

"-reaction when she-"

"-discovers she's run out of-"

"-prefects!"

Before anyone could come up with a suitable reply, Mr Weasley coughed suddenly. "Right, well I think we're done here since Harry's got his trunk." Either Fred or George hauled the box off the ground to emphasize his point, grimacing at the weight of the various potions; Harry wasn't about to just throw them away, he'd worked hard on them. "I'll make sure everyone gets through before fixing this mess and apparating home. Can't have another Knockturn incident after all. You first Ron. From what I've heard, Harry will need someone to help him stay upright."

Harry grumbled incoherently under his breath, biting back the yawn which would remind his body of how long it had been since he'd slept. He only needed to stay awake for a few minutes longer, after which he could collapse onto the spare bed in Ron's room and get the rest he so desperately needed.

Done reassuring himself that all was not lost, Harry tuned into the world just in time to hear Ron shout "The Burrow!"

"Right, you next Harry. And remember to speak properly this time."

Harry mustered up a halfhearted glare at Mr Weasley, barely catching a hint of a smirk before it was replaced by a look of innocence. He took a handful of silver powder, probably more than was strictly necessary, and walked rigidly towards the fireplace. He threw the powder into the fire and stepped inside, yelling "The Burrow!"

Harry felt a lurch as he was sucked through the flames, and tried to tuck his elbows in more. He was a little worried that he's somehow gotten it wrong again, and given that Hermione had explained the process and told him that a pre-Hogwarts student could do it with proper intruction, he disliked the idea of finding himself in the Headmaster's office or somewhere equally embarrassing. When he was spat out, however, it was to the welcoming atmosphere of the Weasley residence.

Unfortunately, the top half of him was moving faster than the bottom half.

The next few seconds were confusing, what with Ron's yells, the roar of the fireplace, the various taps on the floor as Harry used who knew which limbs to keep himself from landing flat on his face. When the world had finally stopped spinning, Harry realised that his eyes had closed involuntarily and opened them to find himself miraculously upright, one hand against a wall. Ron was staring at him like he'd caught the snitch in three seconds, and across the room, Mrs Weasley was fumbling with a plate of sandwiches with a dumbfounded expression matched by two Weasley brothers that Harry hadn't met yet.

Harry sighed as he realised that he wouldn't be getting his sleep for a while now.

* * *

 **I feel like I've committed a crime by not letting Harry even slightly transform by now, but I want to emphasize (as not many fics do, my own Scared? included) how difficult the actual process is, requiring knowledge of several brands of magic, extreme patience, lots of spare time and a great deal of experimentation.**

 **Luckily for both you and Harry though, I eventually decided to make it obscure enough that everyone _thinks_ it's really difficult, but easy enough that a single fourth year can do it without anything else to do. My reasoning for Harry's free time is that his relatives are too afraid of his dogfather to give him chores, so he just sits in his room and practices.**

 **My advice for the next couple of chapters is to take _nothing_ in this fic for granted. Harry's mannerisms, the Author's Notes, Hell, even the title's hiding a very clever (in my opinion) joke. You could probably figure it out by looking through my profile page, even before he starts transforming.**

 **Maybe I'm just tooting my own horn a little too loudly, but I'm actually proud of this fic, especially compared to my more mediocre (Play Dead) or just plain bad (For Want) fics.**

 **Strangely enough, I either can't think of anything to write in this space or I think of too much. I'm going to stop typing before I double the length of the chapter.**


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